Maplecroft Read online

  My conclusions, such as they are, sound like utter madness. But I believe they are borne out by the books that are stacked on the other desks, where I’ve had to establish the library. We couldn’t put shelves along the wall or else the damp would ruin them, so two of the farthest tables are stacked with shorter bookcases. Each of these cases is piled with volumes too arcane and peculiar to display upstairs, despite the fact that we virtually never see visitors.

  Upon reflection, I’m not entirely sure who I’m hiding them from. Not Emma. She’s the one who ordered most of them, and regardless, she’s read them already.

  Nance? No, I don’t think so. Nance is difficult to scandalize, and she’s aware of my interests—though not aware of their extent, or their origins. If pressed, I’d have to say that I’m hiding the books from Nance’s friends, who sometimes accompany her when she visits.

  Or maybe I only do it out of optimism, from the eternal hope that someday we’ll have friends of our own again.

  It’s ridiculous, I know. My infamy taints my sister, who declares her intent to stay by my side even as we both know she’s too fragile for any other recourse. And it’s furthermore ridiculous because our respective activities require a certain solitude. I must be left alone to pursue my experiments, and Emma could never continue her correspondences with eminent scientists and biologists if anyone knew that “E. A. Jackson” was a woman. Thank heavens none of her correspondents has ever dropped by for a spot of tea. I honestly don’t know what she’d tell them.

  It’s a blessing, really, that no one will have anything to do with us.

  • • •

  I picked up the nearest lantern and lit it. It’s a special one, affixed with mirrors and foils, to direct the light wherever I wish to project it—and I wanted to brighten the back right table, beside the two oversized sinks and an assortment of hoses, hooks, tongs, knives, and scalpels. There, in one of my larger jars, a peculiar mass had sunk to the bottom, where it sizzled enough to muster a light froth that foamed throughout the container. It’d been sizzling that way for two days, while an acid solution nibbled away at the calcite. Within that mass, I have always sensed there was something important.

  When I first discovered it, the object was approximately the size of a small melon, and it lacked any geometric shape to speak of. If I were to assign it any general description, I’d say that it looked like a very large hand grabbed a fistful of the ocean bottom and squeezed until the sediment became stone. It was roughly column-like, with bits of finny fluting. Primarily it was white, or the swirled browns and bleached hues of ocean detritus.

  I found it on one of my evening walks on the beach, after dark with a lantern. And at the risk of sounding hysterical, I believe that I felt it. I believe that it called me, and I heard it.

  So I retrieved it, setting my lantern on the sand and hefting the rock into my hands, holding it there. Though it was in no way shaped like a shell, I held it up to my ear and listened—for what, I cannot say.

  But this draw, this lure. I’ve felt it before and I don’t yet understand the full implications of what it means, but I know I should’ve taken more care with the sample. I should’ve wrapped it in my apron and carried it that way, without touching it bare-handed, but I didn’t. I cradled it in one naked arm and held my light aloft with the other, all the way back home.

  There, I returned to my senses and dumped it into the jar full of acid to let science sort it out.

  • • •

  I forcibly tugged my attention away from the bubbling, hypnotic jar and turned instead to a box I keep buried beneath the floor.

  With a quick pop of a pry bar at just the right spot, a row of boards slipped out of place. My floor is not as seamless and immutable as it appears; it is riddled with compartments such as this one.

  Some people keep cupboards in a wall. I keep them in the ground.

  Beneath this lid, which I’d disguised as flooring, a box squatted—smelling of wet soil and worms, and moss, and lichen, and whatever else blackens the earth below my home. I could have pried it out and brought it up to the floor, but I chose not to. For some reason, I felt that the box was safest right there, underneath everything. Underneath my house, my basement, my floor.

  I would bury it deeper if I could, but I need to keep it within reach, this little repository of evil. Soon, I might need to add to its contents—depending on what lies at the heart of that strange mass which dissolves by atoms on the back right table.

  I’m not sure what made me reach into the hole and touch the iron-bound top of that box.

  Yes, again, I’m mired in uncertainties and suspicions, but I have taken all the precautions I can. More than likely, at least half of them don’t work. But when I don’t know what works and what does not work, all I can do is throw it all in together, and trust that some measure of success will result, even if that success is diluted by imprecision.

  So there is a box that is lined with lead and sealed with iron bands, and inscribed with unsettling symbols, and buried in the earth, beneath the rowan-wood boards that make up the floor of my basement.

  I reached down into the hole and fumbled with the latches until it was unfastened all around, and then I lifted the lid for no good reason whatsoever. I’d like to say that the motion was dreamlike on my behalf, that I scarcely recall doing it; but this isn’t quite true, because I remember watching my arm extend, and my fingers manipulate the fasteners, and then lift the lid. I recall every bit of this, and in my recollection, I was fully in control of myself.

  Except that I can’t have been.

  Because now, with some distance from that box and that basement, I know full well that it was a dangerous, absurd thing to do—and that not all the gold in the world, nor all the threats or complaints, could ever persuade me to open it right now, with nothing to add to its treasure.

  And I jot this down, all of it, in case—upon eventual review—some pattern is revealed. These journal entries are already helping, for now I can see, going back over last month’s notes, that there’s a proximal effect to the lure of the box. The farther I remove myself from its contents, the less they affect me.

  If I had any sense, I’d relocate to the desert or the mountains, and be done with this whole business once and for all.

  • • •

  I gazed into the box, upon six bits of stone or glass, all varying in their respective radiance and greenness. They go from the sickly yellowish shade of a toad’s belly to a rich seaweed that could nearly be described as emerald. The smallest is the size of a child’s fingernail. The largest is as big as a plum. All of them are beautiful. Very beautiful. So beautiful it’s all but impossible to take one’s eyes away, even though they look like nothing more alarming than bits of sea glass, glittering weakly at the bottom of a reinforced box.

  Of course, they are more than that. I know it good and well, just like I know better than to kneel over the box and listen to the odd hum they make. But it’s a lovely hum, you see? It’s a calming, drawing thing. When I hear it, as I stare at those scattered pieces of precious jetsam, it’s as if I can hear my mother beside my cradle, and feel the rocking of her gentle hand as she sings me off to a nap.

  No, not the recently late Mrs. Borden—but my true mother, Sarah, who died when I was very small. I have no real remembrance of her, but sometimes I think I recall a perfume, or a very distant voice. The rustle of a skirt, perhaps. A step upon the stairs. Emma says she was a pretty woman, and that she often hummed to herself while she worked around the house.

  I envy my sister’s solid memories.

  My father married Abigail when I was two, and Abigail raised me, albeit reluctantly and without any warmth. She’d wanted to be a society wife, not the live-in caretaker for two girls who were not her own.

  She did not let us forget it often, or for long.

  (I was instructed to call her “Mother” when I was tiny. This was insisted upon to great penalty if I failed, though Emma was old enough that she was
never commanded to do the same. I finally began to refer to her as “Mrs. Borden” when I realized that I was an adult, and that no one could make me do otherwise. I did not owe that cold, interloping daughter of a pushcart peddler the respect of the more personal term.)

  • • •

  I’d left the box open longer than I should have.

  I knew this even before Emma came knocking, but it’s strange—I couldn’t seem to care. I was fully aware that I was tempting fate or something worse, and I was all too certain that the buzzing, warm green noise could be heard by more ears than just my own. But the stones were beautiful, and they were near. They calmed me, nearly to the point of a stupor.

  Emma had called twice from upstairs, and she’d been pounding upon the cellar door for half a minute before I was able to rouse myself enough to say in a choked, weird voice, “Emma dear, I’m nearly finished.”

  I thought I heard her sob. She cried, “Lizzie, you must come, quickly. Something . . . something is trying to come inside. Lizzie, something is here.”

  I slammed the box lid back down and dropped the board atop it, cursing myself for my inattention and reflexively seeking the weapon I keep leaned against the bottom of the staircase.

  There it was, yes.

  I grabbed my axe.

  A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF

  Owen Seabury, M.D.

  MARCH 15,1894

  The first thing I ever learned of my patients is that they lie, incessantly and to their own detriment. They mislead me regarding their injuries; they feign symptoms; they deny delicate but pressing problems out of modesty or embarrassment, or fear of repercussions.

  In short, they are utterly untrustable. But they are also readable, to an experienced man like myself—and I can learn much from the things they leave unsaid.

  But this was not always the case.

  So let me recount the Borden deaths. I may as well. I do not see the benefit of avoiding and ignoring the truth. To the contrary, I’d much rather address the case outright, and shine a light upon it—regardless of what sins of mine may be revealed.

  These are the facts.

  Sometime late in June of 1892 the Borden family began to experience a prolonged, peculiar set of ailments. I was a close witness to their distress, for I was not merely their doctor but also a nearby neighbor. They lived directly across the street from me and my now-late wife, so I had ample opportunity to observe them over the weeks leading up to the murders on August 4 of that same year.

  The first complaints came from Abigail Borden, second wife of Andrew Jackson Borden and stepmother to Andrew’s grown children, Emma and her younger sister, Lizzie, both of whom lived on the premises. Mrs. Borden came to sit in my parlor, having visited for an informal consultation.

  I didn’t know her well, but I liked what I knew of her. She was younger than her husband by enough years to remark it, and agreeable in that comfortable way women sometimes achieve when they marry into money and can expect to be cared for.

  But on that summer occasion she was out of sorts, restless and pale. As she spoke, she fidgeted constantly with a pendant that hung around her neck from a long silver chain. I remember it so vividly because of the way the light caught it, and though I did not see the item clearly, I could not help but notice how its glassy stone gleamed a rich, ocean green shade that cast bright reflections on the walls.

  “Doctor Seabury, it’s a digestive problem. It’s a horrible feeling, at once cold and bubbling. I’m so nauseous, and so light-headed, at times, that I must sit and cover my eyes until the sensation passes.”

  “I see. And is anyone else in the family displaying symptoms like these?”

  After a brief hesitation she said, “Andrew is, a bit.”

  “What are his complaints? Are they precisely like yours, or is there some variation to his discomfort?”

  “I couldn’t say.” She shook her head. “He hasn’t spoken about it. I’ve only . . . noticed. As his wife, who shares the same household. You understand.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “And what of your stepdaughters?”

  Her face darkened and for a moment she quit worrying the pendant. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spoken to either of them lately.”

  “Ah. Has there been any significant change in the family diet?”

  She shook her head again and said, “No, I don’t believe so.”

  I did not press her any further. I already knew what bothered her bowels, though I couldn’t bring it up without prompting denials and offense. So rather than invite confrontation, I said, “Perhaps it’s something seasonal, then. Dyspepsia can arise from almost anything—and rather than leap to alarming conclusions, I honestly think this can be handled with simple, common treatments.”

  I offered her some harmless prescriptions, chiefly carbonate of ammonia pills and white bismuth. It wouldn’t hurt, and it might even help.

  I did not doubt that she was suffering from indigestion. I only doubted my personal ability to address the root cause thereof.

  • • •

  It was no great secret that the Bordens had difficulties. Andrew’s spinster daughters never developed any affection for Abigail; and with the lot of them living under one roof, tensions could—and often did—overflow into arguments . . . the kind of arguments which nearby neighbors might hear, and pretend they hadn’t.

  Not long before Abigail Borden sought me out for this first of many complaints, things at home had escalated in an unexpected and unfortunate fashion.

  As I said, Andrew was older than his wife. He’d lived a full lifetime before ever meeting her. Whether or not she loved him I cannot speculate; but she was content with him, and by all appearances their union was a “good match,” as they say, even though he was widely regarded as a tight-fisted curmudgeon. Regardless, she was at ease with the decisions that had brought her to Andrew, an aged but still vital man—who had a fortune and a family, if few friends.

  That said, I do not think she knew about his son. I’m not sure anyone did, until he appeared.

  When William strolled into town claiming Andrew as his father, efforts were made to keep his existence quiet. I believe he stayed at the Borden home for a few days, though surely a hotel would have been a better choice. At any rate, I saw him coming and going repeatedly over a weekend once, and the timing was deeply suspicious: The elder patriarch was in the process of revising his will—a tense time in any moneyed family. But to a family so fractured already, and burdened with middle-aged daughters unlikely to marry? What added pressure would come with a shiftless bastard in search of an inheritance?

  Little wonder Mrs. Borden was experiencing gastrointestinal distress. She’d hardly be human if she didn’t.

  That’s why I gave her the harmless medicines to soothe her. And that’s why I looked no closer, not at that time. The situation was so clear to me! So obvious!

  Yet the matters were so personal, I doubted she would speak of them; and I didn’t think she’d tolerate my talking about them with any frankness. After all, this was a woman unwilling to converse aloud about her husband’s flatulence. Dragging his past indiscretions into the conversation could only make things worse.

  Or that’s what I told myself when I sent her away, bottles in hand, her pendant clinking against one of them as she walked.

  The next week she came to see me again, twice in quick succession. Still she complained of the troublesome stomach, though the pains were worse, she said. I suspected the beginnings of a peptic ulcer, but I didn’t go so far as to suggest it. The treatments were similar anyway, with the added admonition to rest, avoid stressful engagements, and alter her diet.

  Abigail was already resting more than might have been considered strictly healthful, and she was scarcely eating as it stood. I was afraid that any attempt to more closely restrict her intake would lead to emaciation.

  There wasn’t much I could do about her stressful engagements. They all lived in her house, or insisted they had a right
to.

  Before long, Andrew sought me out as well. His complaints were similar, though never quite as advanced as his wife’s—for Abigail’s digestive issues continued and she grew paler before my eyes. Had the circumstances surrounding her decline been any different, I might have noticed sooner that I’d made some egregious mistake in the diagnosis.

  But in my slim defense, William’s interference had crossed a threshold from nuisance to criminal mischief. The authorities were called on two separate occasions; and on one of these, to my serious concern, both Andrew and Abigail accused the wayward young man of trying to poison them.

  Back then, I considered the accusation, turning it over in my mind. Given even what little I knew of William’s character, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility outright; and the Bordens did appear collectively weakened—even Emma and Lizzie were unusually wan. They too admitted feeling as if they’d eaten something tainted, though neither went so far as to accuse their half brother of any misdeed.

  I offered my assistance, providing more bismuth, diluted nitrous acid, canella bark powders, and even charcoal in case they suspected poison in the future.

  • • •

  Over the summer, the situation deteriorated.

  I was busy—I was distracted by other patients, and by the gossip of William’s presence and behavior lingering over the place like a fog. The murky context of the Borden home life obscured the truth from me. It was not my place to cut through the word of mouth. I was a friend to them, yes, absolutely. Or I tried to be. But I was not family, and whatever was happening across the street was a family matter.

  By the end of July the shouting had stopped. I know, because the weather was overly warm, even given the season. All of us left our windows open, but I barely heard a sound from my neighbors, though my wife said she’d heard strange noises—the kind that made her worry for their health. She had seen their shapes at the window, moving slowly past the wind-stirred curtains.